Shoshiplatypus

What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?

Tiny Carpet #5 complete

The work on this one has progressed really well this week. Last week I left you with the green partially done. Here is the green, completed (apart from the background).

To begin the backgrounds for the top and bottom sections, I have chosen a couple of different shades to make a random background, as I did previously. As before, at this stage it looks perfectly awful but we just have to hang in there and persevere, and once the main colour is added, it all comes together just fine.

The final result, with the main green and red background colours added.

I’m really keen to get Tiny Carpet #6 done, and this third needle book completed now, so that I can get on with other projects.

Food

I broke Granny’s glass…

Not really “food” but food and drink associated. This little glass belonged to my grandmother and I always drank my breakfast juice or kombucha out of it. This week I broke it. Feeling sad. I was very fond of it and it was nice to drink out of, and it was a little link with the past.

No recipe of the week this week, because I’ve been busy replenishing freezer supplies as we’ve run out of various things. Nothing new, nothing earth shattering. So this week I thought I’d share some information with you about starch, and bread, as several of you have commented about trying to eat less of this because of weight gain problems. This is some information I came across over a year ago and it could be really helpful to know. I hope some of my cooking methods and organisation tips might help too. Doing this has saved me a lot of time and energy and also prevented me from running out of stuff just when I need it for a particular recipe. A bit of forward planning and organisation saves a huge amount of work.

Nutrition

Starch – Resistance is not futile; fibre will be assimilated

(For those of you not familiar with Star Trek, the above is a misquote from Seven of Nine, a Borg aboard the Starship Voyager.)

A healthy whole-food plant-based diet is made up mostly of starch. Starch is a complex carbohydrate composed of long chains of sugar molecules, and is found in many foods such as potatoes, legumes (peas, beans and lentils), grains and pasta. Normal starch is broken down fairly rapidly into glucose which is easily absorbed by the body fairly soon after consumption. The more highly processed the carbohydrate is, the more the fibrous cell walls of the plant material have been broken down or eliminated altogether, making the starch much more rapidly digested, giving rise to wider fluctuations in blood glucose levels and resulting insulin spikes. Unrefined carbohydrates prevent this, because they are wrapped up in fibre, and they improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin, reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Resistant starch is starch which resists digestion, and is associated with fibre, both of which are known as prebiotics – substances which feed the gut microbiome. Some resistant starch is starch that is contained inside the protective fibrous wall of the plant cell. This can pass through the stomach acid and beyond, right down to the colon where it is broken down by the gut flora into simpler compounds, such as short chain fatty acids which are then available to be absorbed by the body and are essential for good health.

Resistant starch increases satiety so that you feel full and are less likely to overeat and gain weight.

There is another type of resistant starch that is formed when foods which contain normal starch such as potatoes and rice are cooked, and then cooled. This causes a chemical change in the starch molecule, known as starch retrogradation. The cooking causes the structure of the starch molecule to be altered, and when cooled, a new structure is formed, which is much more stable, and resistant to digestion.

When the food is reheated, the level of resistant starch remains high. This means that you get more health benefits from cooking, cooling and then reheating foods such as potatoes, rice and pasta, than you would from straight cooking alone. You can eat the same foods, and the same quantity, but with this extra step of cooling and reheating, you are improving the nutritional benefit of the food and helping prevent overeating, obesity and type 2 diabetes, as well as giving your gut microbiome a better feast. Weight loss and cholesterol levels are improved. Cooling cooked potatoes overnight and then reheating them the next day has been proved to increase the levels of resistant starch by up to three times.

Some people consider potatoes a risky food as far as diabetes is concerned, because of their high glycaemic index, but most of the deleterious effects come from how we prepare the potatoes before consuming them – the addition of fats and oils by making them into chips (French fries) or crisps, adds to the risk of causing insulin resistance resulting eventually in the onset of type 2 diabetes. It is not the potatoes that are the guilty party, but the fat. Many of the healthiest and longest living populations on earth consume diets high in potatoes and other starchy foods and the incidence of diabetes is virtually nil. The same applies to populations whose staple diet is rice. White rice that has been cooked, cooled for 24 hours and then reheated, has been shown to have an increase in resistant starch of 2.5 times.

The level of resistant starch in wheat has been shown to increase between about 40-80 percent with this treatment. Studies show this to apply mostly to the wheat in bread but it is thought to apply to pasta as well.

How I prepare my starchy foods

Bread

We do not eat bread every day, but usually have one slice, or a slice and a half, with soup or other lighter meals about 3 or 4 times a week. We do not add any butter or low fat spread. (I no longer keep these products in the house.) It is not recommended to keep bread in the fridge because it crystallises the starch and causes the bread to become stale more quickly. However, freezing it, the process of starch crystallisation is dramatically slowed and the bread remains fresh. As soon as my home-made loaf has completely cooled to room temperature, I slice it and bag it, and put it in the freezer. When we want bread, we just take out the required number of slices, and once defrosted, it tastes as fresh as the day it was made.

Rice

My grandmother’s famous Eight Minute Rice Method, handed down to me via my mother! Dead easy, fail-safe method. You take 2 ounces of rice per person. Put a good amount of water into a large saucepan (no need to measure) and bring to a rapid boil. Add the rice and stir well. Reduce the heat slightly to  keep it boiling fast but not boiling over, and for white rice, cook for 8 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally. For brown rice, I always rinse it through a sieve under the cold tap first, and then boil it for 20 minutes. At the end of the cooking time, tip the rice and the water through a sieve and immediately run it under the cold tap to cool it down and prevent further cooking. Shake it well to drain off as much water as possible. We have always done this without knowing about the nutritional benefits, but simply to get the rice cooked and out of the way so that you can cook the rest of the meal, and when you are ready, you can simply pour boiling water through the sieve of rice to heat it up again, and you’re done. However, with the knowledge that I now have, I cook the rice more in advance (I only use brown rice now) so that the resistant starch has a chance to develop, and freeze it in portions for two, so that when I want rice to accompany a dish, I just take out the bag from the freezer, defrost it and heat it up by pouring boiling water through it. I always have rice ready in the freezer and when I use the last bag, I cook another batch (1 lb of raw rice at a time, which results in 4 bags each containing 2 servings of cooked rice).

I do exactly the same thing with other grains such as quinoa, bulgur wheat and millet. I tend to cook couscous as and when I need it because it’s so quick to do.

Pasta

I always use whole wheat or brown rice pasta. The former takes 12 minutes of rapid boiling, cooked like the rice, and the latter takes about 5 minutes. It is cooled rapidly as before, and reheated in exactly the same way.

Legumes

Generally speaking, dried beans and peas need to be soaked overnight before cooking (lentils don’t usually require soaking), but according to my researches and experience, using my electric pressure cooker (or an old fashioned pressure cooker on the stove top) soaking is not necessary – unsoaked legumes just need longer cooking. I have downloaded some charts from the Internet that show the different times required for pressure cooking various types of beans and chickpeas etc., both soaked and unsoaked. I rinse them through in a sieve, and dump them with plenty of water in the pressure cooker, set the timer and let it do its thing. I release the pressure at the end of the cooking time so that I can control exactly how many minutes the legumes are cooked because I don’t like soggy, squishy beans! (With some foods this isn’t critical and you can let the pressure cooker release the pressure naturally as it cools.) I pour the cooked legumes through a colander and then pour cold water through them to rinse and cool them. They are then bagged and frozen in portions as before. I have a chart which shows the dry and cooked equivalents for the various legumes, and I cook a set quantity that once cooked, can be divided into 1 1/2 cup-sized portions – this is the same amount that you get in a standard tin of cooked legumes from the shop. Recipes often call for a can of beans, so I just grab one of my bagged portions from the freezer and I’m ready to go. Again, I always keep a supply of different legumes in the freezer – my regular ones are chickpeas, red kidney beans, black beans and cannelloni beans. The only lentils I prepare in advance and freeze like this are green lentils, bagged in 1/2-tin sized portions – I use these in one of my wraps recipes and it saves time – it’s not worth cooking such a small quantity of lentils on its own.

Kitties

Not so much garden activity this week as the weather has been pretty awful and our pampered little darlings aren’t keen on the cold and wet (we keep telling them that the majority of kitties in the world have to survive by sleeping under cars and scavenging from dustbins but this information doesn’t wash with them – they just look at us with that look that they have that says “what the heck?”). Here are some indoor photos showing them doing what they do best.

Lily loves to rest on Daddy’s arm. She does this in bed (under the duvet). Are they spoilt? My hubby says no, not spoilt, but “favoured.” Ha.

Two heads are better than one.

Lily doing what we call “glooping” on the landing. She flops over and exposes all to the world. This is not something Ruby ever stoops to. Lily is a shameless hussy.

After Lily had a rare session of washing Ruby – it’s usually the other way around because Lily is a lazy lump and Ruby does all the work (being junior kitty in the kitty pecking order).

Here she is, at it.

Crash-out time. Goodness, life is an exhausting business, isn’t it.

Clothes

My brown Marks and Spencer’s dress that I bought years ago and hadn’t worn during my fat years. (Slightly weird light in this photo – it looks blue!!)

I’m wearing the beads I bought with it, and a pair of mother-of-pearl shell earrings. I am also wearing some new stuff that I got on Amazon this week.

I have quite a few cotton polo-neck jumpers that I wear underneath things in the winter for warmth, but they are all getting pretty worn out now and on many of them, the necks have gone very baggy. This year I thought I’d opt for some thermal undies and see how I got on with them. Searching on Amazon I found this lovely high round necked, long sleeved thermal top which has a fleecy inside – I bought two. They are super-soft and comfy, and feel nice and warm.

I have been wearing one of my infinity scarves with this. I love these – they keep you lovely and warm without being tight around the neck. My ancient M&S charcoal grey long cardigan bought in a charity shop more years ago than I can remember tops off the outfit, but I didn’t put these on for the photo, so that you could see the dress better.

I also bought a pack of two pairs of black thermal leggings. These are absolutely gorgeous – quite thick, and with furry linings!

What I particularly like about them is that they are very high-waisted. This is always good for me because I need things to come up well over the top of my stoma bag. They are super stretchy (one-size) but firm and feel like support garments. Below the ankle hem is an extension which is supposed to wrap around your heel for maximum coverage but I do find they tend to sit better around my ankles. These leggings are a pretty tight fit (they may stretch with time) and I think for anyone much larger than me, they might find them a struggle to get into. Once on, they are super-comfy and warm.

I think these thermal garments are going to be great under my winter woollies. I have lots of pairs of ethnic-type trousers which are quite thin and not really suitable for winter, but with the new leggings I might get away with it – and also my various skirts. It gives me more options anyway, and the new leggings are very much warmer than any others that I have got.

While searching, I came across a pack of five pairs of multi-coloured warm socks and simply couldn’t resist them! The fifth pair, the brown ones, are on my feet in the above photo. Plenty of colours to go with my various outfits. I love my Corrymoor socks and will continue to wear them in all their glorious colours but these ones are just Fun! I shall probably wear them over the top of the Corrymoors in the very cold weather.

Still no sign of the multi-coloured tunic dress I ordered online a few weeks ago, but they did say the delivery time was quite long.

Health Update

Bladder

Last Thursday I had my phone appointment with the physio, which had been postponed because she was off sick. It turns out she wasn’t exactly sick, but she is pregnant, and had a false alarm and was told to rest for a few days. She is about to go on extended leave. I shall miss her – she’s a real sweetie and I do wish her well. She has promised to email me a photo of the new baby when it arrives. She will be back next September, and she has said I can contact her then if I want, just to let her know how things are going, and if there are any problems, one of the others will help me. Not that I really need to “see” her any more now, as her advice has borne fruit and I am doing a lot better with my bladder management – it really is a case of my having to decide to go to the loo whether I can feel that I want to or not, unlike most people who can feel it, and just go when they need. The lack of sensation due to the nerve damage means that I have to take more conscious control over it. Following her advice over the recent weeks has allowed my overstretched bladder to return to a more normal size, and I am beginning to feel that I need to go when it isn’t nearly as full, which was the whole idea of the exercise. I am feeling a lot more comfortable about it, and am not having little accidents with dribbles any more either. She also gave me some advice about how to evacuate the built-up of mucus in my rectal stump, without causing irritation. These bladder and bowel physios really know their stuff and are so practical and helpful.

Hernia

Still no news from Exeter. I wait. And wait. And wait. The hernia is getting bigger. I am convinced that before the NCS (the National Covid Service which has replaced the NHS) gets around to fixing this, the whole of my small intestine will have migrated outside my abdominal wall and Shoshi will have turned herself completely inside out. Could be interesting. Watch this space.

Eyes and Teeth

Appointments pending, early next month.

Have a great creative week, everybody.